In a communications system, a repeater such as a satellite may receive a signal from an earth station and re-transmit the signal for receipt by another earth station. The signal is initially transmitted from the earth station with a certain amount of signal power. During the initial transmission of the signal from the earth station to the repeater on the uplink, and as the signal is processed by the repeater and re-transmitted to the receiving earth station on the downlink, a portion of the signal power is consumed. In addition, power may be added to the signal by one or more amplifiers that may be included with the repeater.
Ideally, the signal is received at the receiving ground station with sufficient power such that the signal possesses a desired signal quality. Furthermore, it is generally desirable to minimize the amount of power expended by the repeater such as power expended in amplifying the signal power prior to the downlink. Likewise it is generally desirable to minimize losses that may occur in the signal power during processing of the signal by the repeater.
In the design and development of a repeater system, a developer may incorporate a variety of different repeater components including, without limitation, filters, multiplexers, amplifiers and other components. Each component has losses and gains associated therewith that affect the gain and loss in signal power as the signal is processed by the repeater. Furthermore, components that have the same configuration and which may be manufactured by the same manufacturer may have different performance characteristics such as different gain, loss and noise values.
In this regard, repeater systems having identical configurations with identical components may exhibit different performance characteristics due to the cumulative effect of the individual gains or losses of the repeater components. The cumulative effect of the repeater components may cause certain repeaters to fall outside of established operating specifications and may require the costly and time-consuming replacement of components of the physical model followed by re-testing of the repeater. The scenario may be repeated in an iterative process until the repeater includes the set of components that allow the repeater to operate within specifications.
As can be seen, there exists a need in the art for a system and method for designing and developing a repeater system that allows for analysis of repeater performance with a variety of different components without the need to test a physical model of the repeater.